In recent years there has been a growing interest in the topic of wellbeing. This has been a societal trend but also a trend in education. Primary schools in Ireland had started, from circa 2014, to introduce Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) programmes into their curricula with a view to enhancing the wellbeing of their pupils. These programmes were neither mandated nor facilitated by the DES. Their introduction was a school-based decision.
This narrative inquiry explored the stories of principals and teachers in nine primary schools in County Galway relating to the introduction of SEL programmes in their various schools. The stories recounted described why the participants considered this action was necessary, how the decision was made, what the outcomes were for teachers in classrooms and how they said they could sustain these new practices. Drawing on sociological scholarship and the ethics of care, the work considers public policy and practitioner actions as recounted by teachers and principals and the increasing tension between them at their interface in schools.
A picture emerges from the collected narratives of a growing anxiety among young children that schools feel compelled to respond to. Caring practices are central to the work that is transacted in schools and a driver of decision-making. However, in the context of a new managerialism in education, teachers are being hampered in their care practices by what they described as an avalanche of new initiatives. They speak about being overstretched and failing to address their caring priorities in a meaningful way.
In presenting a clear picture of the tension between care and managerialism, the research highlights the dilemma of schools and the necessity to validate the daily caring practices enacted in classrooms and in schools
